The legal, financial, and social importance of environmental management systems

Implementing an environmental management system involves the integration of several components. These include developing a corporate environmental objective, or policy, and finding a strategy for realizing and monitoring that policy. To ensure success, it is essential that each organization create a system unique to its environmental goals. Environmental management systems necessarily involve legal dimensions. Organizations need to be aware of those legal dimensions or they run the risk of not complying with the law. Some of the legal aspects which pertain to environmental management systems are issues of privilege, liability of corporate directors and officers, the defense of due diligence, and audit systems. Management systems involve not only legal concerns, but also financial and social questions. The public perception of due diligence and the costs of non-compliance, including legal sanctions and loss of business, can be financially devastating for corporations. A key force behind the implementation of a corporate management system, is public pressure. Consumers today are sophisticated and environmentally aware; they demand proactive measures. Canadian and International standards are presently being developed, to ensure universal norms of environmental management. Once universal standards have been achieved, corporate environmental management systems will be evaluated by cohesive criteria.